The Demand for Additional Nutrients Due to Stress

Good nutrition is the key to vitality, longevity and defence against illness. Although drugs may help keep us living longer, it is a lifetime habit of good nutrition that will help make it enjoyable. Just because you do not show any symptoms of illness now does not necessarily mean that you are healthy. These things manifest over a period of time – years. They creep up and take you by surprise. By taking care of yourself now, you are insuring yourself for the future.

Today’s lifestyle and environment mean that we need to do a little extra to cover the nutritional gaps caused by missed meals, fast food, soil depletion and modern harvesting methods.Did you know…..???– Studies have shown that the average loss of Calcium and Iron in some fruits and vegetables due to soil depletion is 30%.
– That for storage and transport reasons, many commercial farms harvest produce green; before the real nutrition can naturally form in the plant?
– A cooked carrot loses nearly all of its vitamin A and vitamin E activity?
– That when cooking spinach you lose nearly all the zinc, vitamin K, vitamin B6 and folate?
– That in processing of many foods there is a significant loss of saccharides and sterols?This does not mean that you cannot get all the nutrition you need from your food; it simply means you need a lot more of it; that in turn means accepting the additional calories ….and financial cost!!

Then there is the problem of stress.

Psychological Stress
We live in a fast paced world with unprecedented levels of social and work-related pressures. Scientific studies have clearly shown that psychological stress lowers immune function. The more stress, the greater the demand for nutrients.

Physical Stress
As the body creates energy to move our muscles we release free radicals which require antioxidants to prevent them doing damage. People who exercise intensely are going to require more antioxidants than average. However, even the exercise from standing and walking generates free radicals. If your diet is deficient you may be accumulating oxidative damage that may adversely affect your immune system and ultimately may contribute significantly to serious disease. At best you may experience fatigue, or lethargy.The more stress, the greater the demand for nutrients.

Dietary Stress
We have already mentioned the nutritional gaps caused by soil depletion, poor eating habits, modern harvesting methods and processed food. Nor was the human body designed to function with white bread, biscuits, french fries and overcooked food; it was designed to eat fresh, raw, natural food. Heated food loses nutritional value and some become nothing but empty calories. However, there are very few of us who will not indulge in the modern way of life but how many of us will compensate for it. And even if we try, do the extra fruits and vegetables we eat really contain the nutrients they should, or that are needed? The more stress, the greater the demand for nutrients.

Environmental Stress
We believe that the most serious threat to human health is the oxidative stress caused by toxins in the environment. In the last 70 years over 75,000 synthetic chemicals have been introduced into our environment and only a fraction of them have been tested for safety in humans. They are in our water supplies, in our soil, in the air we breathe, the products we use and the materials we build, furnish and decorate our homes with. There is no getting away from it. Pesticides have been found in the snow at the North Pole and in the tissue of Penguins at the South Pole. Just because a food is certified organic does not mean that it is toxin free. The more stress, the greater the demand for nutrients.

You can try to compensate for this extra demand by simply eating more and eating extremely well; grazing all day on raw broccoli, freshly juiced raw vegetables, more broccoli and more raw vegetables…….you get the picture! And even then you cannot be sure. That’s why we advocate supplementation and it is also why we advocate that supplementation be largely superfood based like NuZest’s Good Green Stuff; raw, concentrated, nutrient-rich greens, fruits vegetables and berries …..with an added dose of extra vitamins and minerals …. just in case!

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